Second on the list is Oracle’s Lawrence J. Ellison with $77.6 million, followed by J.C. Penney’s Ronald B. Johnson with $53.3 million.

Rupert Murdoch, who is or ought to be in big trouble because his News Corp. has been hacking into people’s private lives, is nevertheless rewarded with total compensation of $29.4 million.

A spokesperson for Mitt Romney criticized the so-called Buffett Rule, which called for a 30 percent tax on millionaires and which, as expected, Senate Republicans shot down, as a “tax hike on hardworking Americans.”

Who’s to say that those hard-working executives aren’t worth what they’re getting?

Not me.

On the other hand, I think millions of hard-working Americans are worth what they’re not getting.

The wages of the average worker have been stagnant for the last decade while health care, gas, food, college tuition, etc., have been soaring.

The economy is gradually recovering from the plunge of 2007-08, but the gap between the richest 1 percent and the middle and poorest is the highest it’s been since the 1930s.

In the late 1970s, as political economist Robert Reich notes, CEOs were paid 40 times the average worker’s wages; now it’s more than 300 times.

In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2004, they had 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of total wealth.

Pennsylvania is one of several states with Republican governors and legislatures that are cutting back on Medicaid and, under the welfare reform of 1996, cutting back on eligibility for welfare in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Many hardworking Americans — teachers, police, fire fighters, health workers and other government employees — have lost their wages, laid off by state and local governments.

According to the Census Bureau, 46 million Americans live below the poverty line, and the majority are women and children.

As many as one in four low-income single mothers are jobless and without cash aid — roughly 4 million women and children, The New York Times reports.

The welfare-reform measure, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, sets work rules and time limits for recipients.

What do they do when there isn’t any work?

The big question for Americans, President Obama said, is can “we succeed as a nation where a shrinking number of people are doing really, really well, but a growing number are struggling to get by? Or are we better off when everybody gets a fair shot?” That’s what this year’s election will decide.